Month: January 2013

Arriving at our apartment in Rome we were reunited with our mothers Julie (Karen) and Lynette (Reubs) nearly ten months after leaving New Zealand. We were very excited to see them (and we think they were excited too, despite being pretty fatigued after nearly 40 hours of travel!) Lynette had never been to Europe, and…

We had been planning a brief visit to Vienna en route to meeting our mothers in Italy and were delighted when friends of ours moved from New Zealand to Vienna and invited us to stay. It was lovely to catch up with Halina and Andy and their children Emily, Matthew and Nathan. We were…

In Prague, Christmas Eve is the main celebration day, and nothing is open. Consequently, we spent the day relaxing and resting before making our way to Old Town Square for an outdoor Christmas mass. We arrived with lots of time to spare, so went for a walk along the quaint cobblestone alleys around Old Town…

We arrived into Prague and stepped off the bus into light, floating snow – it was so beautiful just to watch the snow fall. It wasn’t heavy enough to stay on the ground but it was a beautiful first sight! We made Prague a mixture of relaxing and sightseeing – our first adventure was…

We decided to visit Sachsenhausen concentration camp while we were in Berlin. The camp is located about an hour’s train ride outside of Berlin, and was free to visit. We went on a freezing cold, grey day, which made the whole experience extra bleak but seemed appropriate given the nature of the camp. It made…

We arrived in Berlin in the morning and realised that we had been given slightly wrong directions to our Airbnb place…and our phone was refusing to load Google maps. 3 hours after we got on the train at the airport we managed to find our apartment and promptly collapsed! We managed to revive ourselves that…

We left the beautiful northern shores of Portstewart to head for the city of Dublin where my friends Edwina and Ebenezer live. I was really excited to see them and spend time with them as it had been five years since I had last seen them in Ethiopia. On our first day there, we headed…

From Belfast we headed right up to the top of Ireland, to stay with our friends Samantha and Nicole and their daughter Lucia. Sam and Nicole run an ice cream shop called Morelli’s to Go in Portstewart, a beautiful seaside town which is very close to the famous Giant’s Causeway. We had an amazing time with…

We arrived in Belfast very early in the morning one weekend to stay for a few days with Reuben’s friends Mark and Elaine and their children Ben and Katie. It was lots of fun staying with a family – we got to visit Santa, watch the fabulous movie “Arthur Christmas” and go to their church…